A Change of Fate
by carlycarter
Summary: Just a one shot drabble, Aeryn reflecting on her life and choices...


_For Sarah J, with thanks and credit to her for the title, and the beautiful artwork which you can view at my LiveJournal. A very wise and inspirational person, and a treasured friend. _

_With my many thanks to the beautiful Claudia Black, for her amazing portrayal as Aeryn Sun, and the amazing group of talented people at the Claudia Black Online FaceBook group, who inspire me with their creativity and support each and every day._

_This is just a one shot that was distracting me from finishing my longer stories (Dark Before the Sun, and Broken Promises' ), and I had to get it out of my head. I hope you like it, if you do you can thank Sarah J for encouraging me to share it. And if you don't like it...well I am sorry. I know its dark, just my take on things from one perspective._

_I take no responsibility for the grammar, it's actually very correct Sebacean grammar, though it might not appear correct in english haha. _

_Just a one shot drabble..._

_**A Change Of Fate **_

This, she realises as she climbs on board her prowler, was something she should have done a long time ago.

The fact is, she may as well have died on that wretched planet on that cursed day John Crichton entered her life. She may as well have let Crais lead her, like a lamb to the slaughter. A nice public execution, a big crowd, make an example of her.

And as she think about the lifelessness in Crichton's eyes, she thinks he may very well have hung right beside her.

There and then, and it all would have been over.

Quick and painless.

What good had come from this so called 'life'?

Crichton...What had he brought her? Irreversible contamination? A miserable life on a ex-prison ship, as an enemy in the eyes of all her ship mates, where at every turn she would be called upon to betray her loyalties to all she had ever known and pledged her existence to?

And she had fallen for him so hard, for all of his lies, his ridiculous nonsense about 'meaning'.

There was no meaning.

Revelation after revelation taught her that. Everything was meaningless in the end. Her mother, for example. And this is a good place to start, because really she never should have been born in the first place. Secondly she realises that this pathetic memory from her childhood was real, her mother had come to her, told her she was special, she was loved. And to what end?

She always liked to think of her father as a man not dissimilar to Crichton. A man of honour, integrity. An innocent victim of the peacekeepers, of her mother's. Fact is, they probably offered him the same deal, he just wasn't quite quick enough. She may as well have died as a child that very night, at the hands of one, or both, of her parents. For all the difference it would have made.

And what would be different in the universe if she had not lived? Nothing. Or maybe something. Maybe Zhann would be alive, if she had never lived. But she is powerless to change that. Had always been powerless. Zhaan forced the so called 'gift of life' upon her, she didn't ask for it, didn't want it. Took it only because Zhaan insisted Crichton needed it. How wrong that turned out to be.

Her life had little to no significance. She flew a prowler, as did hundreds of bred-for-battle-peacekeeper-pilots.

She was not significant.

Anytime she found herself becoming significant, for example to Velorek, well she very quickly turned that situation around. Screwed him over before he could hurt her. Destroyed everything, including him, and especially including the vision he had of her. Her future. His hope for her to be "More." That vision needed to be stomped on, and destroyed.

And then came Crichton. With all his talking, and feelings, his wretched pathetic painful "humanity" . Where had it got them?

Nowhere.

"I hear I was a Princess." She says it because, well,she is trying to start a conversation, trying desperately to forge a connection. Why is she trying to do this? She could not answer.

It was always his very defined role to come to her with the talking. She pushed him away, she ran away, she threw everything back in his face, that's what she did.

Until she did it one too many times, so she came to discover...and rather than being relieved that she seemed to have shaken his interest, much to her surprise she found that it hurt. It cut her. Like a knife...which he twisted, over and over, the times just like this, when he walked right past her, as if she was nothing, less than nothing, he had to know how much that hurt. And he did it. Why?

OK, She made a lot of mistakes. She left. She shouldn't have left. She knew no other way.

Not true-she knew two sure fire ways to deal with the situation- first the way she had handled Velorek. She destroyed him, and his faith in her, destroyed it because she didn't understand it, she wasn't trained to deal with love, faith, belief...

Number two plan was run...and even that, to her immense shame, she found she could not do...she had come crawling back, and not only that, she had used his enemy to help her.

He hated her for it all, she feels it. Hated her for leaving, hated her for coming back, hated her for seeking help from Scorpious. Hated her for being pregnant, hated her because it might not be his baby, hated her because it very well might be. Hated her for not telling him, hated her for not knowing.

And after all of that hatred, one day, there was simply nothing left in his eyes, just blank stillness.

Sometimes, just to torment herself, she thinks about the other Crichton. The dead one. She wonders if he hates her too? Maybe he would hate her even more than this alive one does. Maybe this living Crichton isn't the real one. That's how she HAS to see it. Because if this one is real, and hates her to the point that she doesn't exist to him, even though she is very possibly carrying his child, well that was something she could not live with. That was harder than living with the fact that the real John, the John who loved her, was gone.

She had destroyed Velorek in the blink of an eye. and it was over, in a flash, he was gone, she didn't have to live with any part of it.

Not until they found that wretched tape and threw it all back at her...

But this...this life with Crichton, drags on and on.

She had let herself love him, really love him. And he had died. And since that day she has been walking around dead on the inside.

And here she has a second chance. Another Crichton. A baby. And this is what she has turned it into.

To frell everything up completely was one thing. But to still be here right in the middle of the mess she made, that was something else.

There are simple irrefutable facts about this baby. First and foremost, it's not a baby, not yet. It's a pre-baby. It's not a viable life form until or unless a surgeon releases it from stasis within a particular time frame. It is, at most, a potential to be a life.

It may be Velorek's baby. And then what? She would have a child she would have to look at every day, seeing Velorek in it's eyes, seeing her own selfishness and betrayal and regret? No.

It may be Crichton's. In which case there was an extremely slim chance it was a viable baby at all. Not with the battle modifications she had been given. It simply wouldn't do for peacekeeper females to be captured and raped in battle and give birth to Sebacean half breeds.

So it really isn't a baby. Which is good fortune, since Crichton doesn't want it. She doesn't want it. She doesn't want to be someones mother. Look at her own mother. Velorek is dead, one of Crichton is dead, and she is dead on the inside, so it's a good thing its not a real baby.

She wishes she was dead on the inside, rather. In truth she was so full of living emotions. Disappointment in herself, in him. Pain and loss and guilt and grief. Things she had tried to push down so deeply, but there simply wasn't room for anymore. For all her shattered hopes and dreams.

How badly she wants to hurt him. First he makes her fall in love. Then he dies. Then he turns to ice and shuts her out as if she didn't matter, as if the fact she might be pregnant with is baby didn't matter.

Damn that baby. No matter how much she tries to tell herself its not even a baby, she can feel it inside her. That's what makes her think it's Crichton's baby. Because she can feel it. And surely she would have felt something at the time if it had been Velorek's?

It feels like something a peacekeeper should not feel. Something perhaps like how her mother felt that night she had come and whispered those things. Truth at the time, but meaningless in the end.

There was no room in peacekeeper life for maternal feelings. She blames them entirely on the humanness of the thing growing inside her. .and it was the one thing, the single thing , keeping her alive...this responsibility, this feeling, that she was needed- not by Crichton, not by the others, ..that even though her life or death meant nothing to anyone, not even herself, there was a person inside of her. And she clung to it. Like desperate secret hope. Knowing even that a human child would not live. Knowing it might not even be human, Knowing either way, Crichton didn't want it, didn't want her. Would not even look at her. Never asked her how she was, how the baby was. He simply did not care.

And because of it, she found herself caring all the more. As she tried to deaden herself to everything around her, she could not, because there was this life inside her, this wretched life, this painful, insidious,secret, precious, destructive,... hope.

And then...the baby was gone...

And only once she had endured, alone, the painful cramps, the bleeding, only once she was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt there was no more baby, no more potential for a baby, no more whatever it was that had been inside of her, part of him, of them, life, hope, a future. Only when it was gone, did she realise how attached she had become...did she realise it was the last desperate thing she pathetically clung to.

She could not very well cling to him, there was no dignity in that, only painful rejection , over and over, and she had nothing left to cling too her in herself, no honour, no pride, no integrity, she lost it long ago...it was him, the illusion, deception, that she was capable of more, or better. It was never real. She died inside a long time ago. Part of her with Velorek, part with her mother, part with her first Crichton, part each time other Crichton twisted that knife, and the very last pieces of her died with their baby.

And instead of loss, grief, pain, the things she expected, she felt a relief...intense relief, to the point she almost felt guilty for how good she felt. Because there was nothing left tethering her to this place, to him, to this life, to herself..nothing left.

She had not planned it, or even really thought about it. She just wakes up that morning, and knows what she has to do. She takes her time, because suddenly a tiny part of her feels a sadness, as if she is going to miss this place, Moya, Pilot, Chiana, D'Argo, Rygel even,... and John..

It's why she chooses not to share her last meal with them. Because she is a little bit afraid that if she saw them, any of them, that she might change her mind , and she can't...just can't.

Because this is the first time in a long long time that she felt free. Free of pain and regret and grief and guilt, free from Crichton, his expectations, his anger, his blame, free of herself...and she can't give it up.

Besides, the one person she really wants to notice her, isn't going to notice her, and she cant take one more time of him walking right past as if she were invisible...

It would be one thing if she treated him like that too. But she all but burst into tears and threw herself in his arms every single time her walked past. She always make an effort to speak, because he long ago gave up initiating conversation. She always let him push her away, as if it was his way of punishing her. As if maybe when he felt he had punished her enough, this would end...

But she knows, now, it will not end. Ever.

Even if he changed his mind, forgave her, there would be something else. Always something else...

He would die, or she would disappoint him, betray him like everything else in her life since the day she was born. She was a traitor to her people, to Velorek, to her mother...her mother was a traitor too, no loyalty, no honour. Really, what had Crichton ever expected in her?

As she climbs on board her prowler, the one thing she still held dear form her Peacekeepe days, she tries to tell herself none of this happened. None of it, she never even made it to prowler duty, because she never betrayed Velorek. She never ran away with him either, she never even let him in... she never met Crichton, never made a traitor and outcast of herself in the eyes of everyone she knew and loved.

…..never loved him, never lost him, never conceived his child, never lost his child, never tried all those times to get his attention when he didn't want to give it...

….never been born, really, if not then her mother, her father, would be alive. Velorek would still be alive. Zhaan would still be alive. Other Crichton would still be alive.

She was an abomination, turning everything she touched to ash, and finally now, through the reflection in Crichton's eyes- she sees it.

Finally, she knows what she has to to do end it. Finally, she smiles, really smiles, because its all going to be over very, very soon.


End file.
